


A Wind from Nowhere

by Elywyngirlie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Conversations, Deathly Hallows era, F/M, Magic is a character, Manipulation, badass Hermione, come and go room, fleeting friendship, not quite a time travel fic, overtures - Freeform, romance in the dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-19 04:56:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19349926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elywyngirlie/pseuds/Elywyngirlie
Summary: She is ripped from time, fleeting, only moments of bonding, before hurtling back to her time.He thinks magic is gifting him to her. She thinks only of survival.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [bunnystealsyour carrot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnystealsyourcarrots/pseuds/bunnystealsyourcarrots) for introducing me to this ship. It warms my Hannigram heart. Also check out her amazing works! 
> 
>  
> 
>  _Then I go outside and cross the fields to the highway._  
>  I’m fourteen. I’m a wind from nowhere.  
> I can break your heart.  
> \--Ai, The Kid

The first time she tumbles into the past she is short of breath, chest rattling, her knees hitting stone as she skidded to a halt. Her wand is out, her face is set, and her heart is racing--where is he? 

 

It’s not Draco Malfoy that her gaze lands on but a Malfoy nonetheless--pointy chin and shockingly white hair. She barely raises from her crouch, expelliarmus on her lips, as she takes in the circle of boys. 

 

“How’d you get in here?” a tall dark haired boy demands. Another one--taller and broader yet--grabs his shoulder and yanks him back. His dark gaze rakes over Hermione and she shivers. Power hangs heavy in the air--ashy and acrid. 

 

The boy points his wand at her and she rises to her full height. He opens his mouth and before he can manage a word, magic spills from her and ropes bind him tight. His counter curse is reflexive, explosive, and she cries Stupefy before he can retaliate. 

 

Too late, the crucio is wordless and she strains and screams and she clamps her mouth shut, fighting, fighting, fighting.

 

“Who are you, little spy?” he demands. 

 

She shrieks. She seals that part of her mind away, the part that knows to clutch on to her wand, that part that knows to have the next spell sitting on her lips. He relents at last expecting her obedience. 

 

“Confrigo,” she whispers. It barely has any heat. But her voice carries and he is flung across the room, flames licking his legs. She hears Aguamenti as she rolls to her feet, sliding behind a column, air trapped in her chest. She has to force it out as she dimly hears the boys yelling. 

 

“Is she one of Grindelwald’s?” a boy shouts, edging slowly toward her position. 

 

“You idiot,” another boy sneers. “Why would he be interested in me?”

 

“Sorry, Riddle, it’s just a thought.”

 

“When I want your thoughts, I’ll give them to you.” 

 

Hermione grips her wand. Riddle. She’s been inexplicably blown into the past, to Tom Riddle. What a joke. It had to be the Horcrux’s fault. If she could summon the hate bubbling in her chest, bend it to her will and kill him now, what would it do to her future? 

 

She imagines Harry with his mom and dad, the joy in his face. She imagines a calm year at Hogwarts and catches her snort. She closes her eyes, thinks about the spell, the words on her lips. 

 

But when she opens them to turn, he is there. And there is a knowing gleam in his eye. 

 

“Tell me now who you are and I promise to end it gently.”

 

“Does how it end matter so much as the fact that it is ending?” Hermione shoots back. She’s less afraid of his wand at her throat than she should be. Magic rises and undulates around them and she can tell he feels it too. His brow wrinkles and for a moment she curses the fates for giving him a Hollywood star face with sloping cheekbones and perfectly curled hair. 

 

“It does if I’m giving it to you,” he hisses and she snorts.  She is opening her mouth to reply, her wand aiming toward him when magic bowls them over, knocking Tom into her before she is whisked away, back to the Forest of Dean, where Harry exclaims over her absence. Her heart pounding, blood rushing her ears, she tells him everything. 

 

* * *

 

He thinks about that incident for days after it occurs. He thinks about her hollow cheeks and shadowed eyes. Her odd denims--why would a witch of her power be a lowly mechanic? The strange too tight jumper that gave no lies to the curve of her waist or her slim legs. The haunted, fierce gaze that told him that she had seen battle. And how in the hell she managed to apparate in and out the Come and Go room. 

 

He surmises that she had killed. That she was strong and vicious. 

 

He wonders how all the facts hang together. 

 

He is sitting in the Come and Go room, fire  behind him the only light in the room. A log pops and he pours himself a glass of firewhiskey. He had traded potions essays for it. Soon, he muses, he won’t have to sell his talents to anyone. He can just snap his fingers and whatever he desires would be rightfully his. 

 

His gaze is vacant, he is lost into the dark depths of the room, when he sees her. She appears, a glimmer of light, before fully formed, a bag of groceries in her arms. Her eyes are dreamy until he sees recognition flicker in her eyes. The bag is dropped and she is reaching for her wand--

 

“Don’t bother,” he orders. “I’ve no problems killing you.” 

 

“I’ve no doubt about that,” she sneers. But she flinches--minutely, barely enough for him to catch--and fear graces her face. He decides the likes the look on her. 

 

“Who are you?” 

 

She says nothing, eyes darting around the room, and Tom sighs. This game they are playing is tiring. If only she would look him in the eyes and then he could end it. There were other, less elegant ways, but the cruciatus last time had only shown him how strong she was. 

 

“Imperio,” he murmurs and he watches her relax, her eyes going glassy, her grimace transformed. Underneath her lax muscles, he can sense her struggle. She is fighting him with every pulse of blood in her veins and he feels her resistance as he rises from his seat to approach her. She is smaller than him, petite and so easily broken. 

 

And again he smells magic. Hot and burning--too charred skin on steak. Wasteful. He wonders if its her or him or something between them. 

 

“Who are you?”

 

He watches her struggle. “Her….myyy….neeeee”

 

She’s stronger than she knows. 

 

“Hermione? Curious. Not a wizarding name,” he says. She winces and he grins, blood filling his mouth. He’s got her scent now. 

 

“Ah, a halfblood? Or worse yet a mudblood?” Her gaze narrows and he knows he’s struck home. She’s heard it before.  It’s familiar to her like a well worn pair of shoes. An insult that has wormed its way under her skin and made a part of her--just another feature like her bushy hair or burning eyes. 

 

“And how are you getting here, Hermione?”

 

“......un...sure….” she hisses. He takes it for fact. She’s not powerful enough to resist him entirely. This must be something completely unrelated. 

 

“Are you fighting for Grindelwald?” It’s a stupid question but it must be asked. Besides, he is reveling in her struggle. The way she fights her lips opening, baring her teeth. Her eyes battling to close, her chest heaving as she tries to take a full breath, fingers twitching. Her magic strains against his and he can almost feel his control slip. 

 

“No,” she grits and he smiles. He didn’t think so. Lestrange is an idiot, he thought, and this is just the nail in that coffin. Banishing a future punishment for Lestrange to the back of his mind, Tom studies the odd girl. Her clothing, her forthrightness, her lack of fear. 

 

“Are you...a time traveler?” He hazards. But her eyes widen and her skin goes fish belly white and he doesn’t stop the triumph from gleaming in his own eyes. 

 

“Ah yes, that explains it,” he murmurs, pacing beside her. She obviously knows who he is--does this mean he is successful? But the fear is unexpected. Unless, of course, he does go through his mudblood repatriation work and puts them in a special wizarding village. Or, perhaps, he exceeds Grindelwald’s work. He takes comfort in the fact that his place in the history of magic is secured before dismissing it. Of course it is. What else would await the Heir of Slytherin? 

 

He can feel the magic rising again and he growls. He remembers it swell before it stole her away. He doesn’t want to lose her--he needs what’s in her mind. 

 

“Look at me,” he snaps, urgency threatening to seal his voice. Hermione’s dark eyes slowly track to meet his and he gives her what he knows is a truly terrible smile. 

 

“Legilimens.” But before he can part the grey mist of her mind, she is gone. 

 

His only comfort is destruction until all that remained of the room is splinters. 

 

* * *

 

She tells Harry everything. He tries to teach her Occlumency. He is awful at it but he tries, a labor of love and fear. It fills the vacant hours since Ron’s departure. His absence tugs at her attention, her heart a fickle thing, and her fist clenches. She loathes herself for falling for his crooked smile, his unerring bravery--until it turned to spite and cowardice. 

 

Her judgment is not as sound as she thinks it to be, she whispers to herself. 

 

Spring rain splatters on the tent and she fidgets in Harry’s arms. She is tired, she is worn, the locket heavy around her neck. Her daily existence is a fright now and it takes more courage than she knows she has to get out of bed every morning. Harry’s solution is dancing and they take to it every night. 

 

He is telling her a stupendously bad joke when she feels the crest of magic hurtling toward her. She screams, Harry’s fingers sliding through hers, and she is yanked into the Room of Requirement. She does not want to turn around, her hand sliding toward her jeans, gripping her wand tightly. 

 

“You’re back.” His voice is warm and pleasant. How she loathes it. 

 

She turns quickly, wand out, and is surprised to see his wand lying next to him on the table. She barely has a moment before she is thrown across the room. 

 

Ah, she thinks, as she throws a cushioning charm behind her and a protego in front of her. He’s mastered wandless and nonverbal. She blocks an incarcerous and then a levicorpus. He’s going to try to imperio her again, she is desperate, and she dives behind another convenient column.

 

The Room of Requirement deserves all the praise she can muster. 

 

“Are you going to hide the entire time that you are here?” he taunts. 

 

“I don’t see why not,” she flings back. “It’s not like there’s anything else to do.” 

 

“What if I swear not to hurt you?”

 

“Too broad.”

 

“Alright, what if I swear that no harm from me or mine shall befall you?”

 

Hermione chews on her lip. Nothing ventured nothing gained, she thinks. Magic usually only keeps her for a few moments, at any rate, and should whisk her away soon. Besides, she can’t ignore the curiosity that is starving within her. She has so many questions. To be able to interview the dark lord. To plunge the depths of his mind. To perhaps sway him? She desperately clings to McGongall’s lecture about the integrity of the timeline. 

 

“Swear no harm mentally or physically,” she says. She hears a dry laugh. 

 

“Not emotionally?” She snorts. The man has already destroyed her and her friends. She looks down and tucks in the locket. No need to give him an idea he may not have had yet, she reasons. And it protects the timeline. 

 

She peeks around the corner and he swears on his wand. She doesn’t hesitate to stand up and head toward the warmth of the fire. His commitment to the integrity of magic is clear to her, even in her time. 

 

After so long in the tent, this room is warm and cozy and inviting and the chill from the tent seeps out of her bones. 

 

“You trusted me to keep that,” he remarks, amused. She looks at the tray of sandwiches beside him and without asking, grabs one, taking a hearty bite. She can feel his gaze drilling to her as she hastily eats the ham and cheese sandwich. It is good in the way that Hogwarts meals are always good. Thick crusty bread, tomato always in season, juicy ham, and sharp cheddar. She hasn’t felt this full in weeks and her legs tremble. She takes the seat across from him. 

 

She keeps her wand in her hand. 

 

“What year is it?” she asks after a moment, hoping to place Tom Riddle into history. Perhaps he hasn’t opened the chamber yet, she thinks, and for a moment, a twinge of hope--could she dissuade him? Doubt devours it and she orders her spine to remain straight. 

 

“1942,” he replies with a knowing smirk. He’s sixteen, she recalls. He probably has already opened the chamber, perhaps already has a horcrux. The locket hangs heavily between her breasts, hot and mocking and she fails to repress a shudder. 

 

Tom cocks his head, an entirely serpentine move. 

 

“How do you know me?” he asks. Hermione debates which answer wouldn’t violate the fabric of space and time. 

 

“You’re famous,” she eventually says and is not at all surprised when he puffs his chest, looking entirely too proud of himself. She holds back the derisive snort--this time. 

 

“Of course but for what? Do I become Minister?”

 

“If you know that I’m a time traveler, then you know that I can’t reveal that sort of stuff.” She can’t quite hide the irritation and Tom raises a single perfectly arched brow. She loathes his stupidly handsome face. Of course the dark lord would be an attractive man. Why not sarcasm hums and she swallows a scowl. Still, it rattles her and her grip on her wand creaks with tension. 

 

“Time theory is still debatable.”

 

“Not in my time. We’ve ascertained that further than five hours destroys the anchors in time. When you damage the timeline, consequences are far greater than you might think.” 

 

Tom frowns. “You mean consequences outside of the grandfather paradox?” 

 

“Yes.”

 

“But what about the multiverse theory?” he tosses back and she blinks. Is she debating philosophy and magical theory with Lord Vodlemort? She can’t hide the astonishment and Tom’s frown evolves into a sneer. He is questioning her intelligence. Pride rears its ugly head and she plunges into the magical take on multiverse with him. 

 

For the next hour. 

 

She doesn’t realize how much time has passed, carefully phrasing her sentences so he doesn’t spool history from her (which he is trying to do, she can tell, she’s not an idiot) until Tom casts a tempus and realizes it’s nearly midnight. They blink at each other. This is the longest she’s been here. 

 

Her mind races over the differences between this visit and the others.  It had to the conversation, icy horror sliding through her veins with each squeeze of her heart. She inhales sharply. 

 

“Interesting,” is Tom’s only response and she can’t help the wild terror climbing up her throat. The stupefy and body bind curses come easily to her and as Tom shouts at her, the magic rises and sweeps her away. 

 

Back into Harry’s waiting arms and she breaks down into tears. 

 

* * *

 

He understands the rules now and makes sure to set the trap every evening. She always comes in the evening. He ensures there is food and drink and a blanket for her. She is exhausted from something, he reasons, and plying her with comfort is a well used torture tool. He stockpiles questions and plots ways to get her to reveal the truth. 

 

She has been practicing occlumency, he discovers on her fifth visit. He has cajoled her with a Sunday roast dinner and he knows that she hasn’t enjoyed a repast like this in months, if not years, by the speed in which she ungracefully shovels it into her mouth. She nimbly steps out of traps that he lays for her and he growls. He determines that knowledge is her weak point and to his discontent, finds that he enjoys debates with her. 

 

For whatever reason, this Hermione is brilliant, perhaps his true intellectual equal. Yes, she refuses to allow her mind to delve into the darkness as he does, but she acknowledges it. She doesn’t shy away from it and to his utter delight, he discovers that she has read some of the darkest tomes. 

 

She is always wearing denims and a masculine styled shirt. He wonders what year she is from. He deduced correctly that she is in Gryffindor. Her hair is a wild untameable thing, a cloud around her face. For some reason unknown to him, he offers her a bottle of Sleekeazy. 

 

She laughs. 

 

“Not all of us have time to care about our hair, Riddle.”  It’s her first laugh and it’s vivacious and full and he rubs his chest. Something strange is happening. He doesn’t understand the churning in his stomach and wonder what he ate. 

 

“How you look is important,” he attempts to justify. “If you choose to wear a lion’s mane, then you’ve set yourself up to fail. But good looks ease people, it opens doors.”

 

“Ah yes I bet you learned that a smile here or there buys you exactly what you want,” she muses, nibbling on a shortbread. He shakes his head. He doesn’t know why he is trying to convince her. But he feels compelled to try again. He wonders if she has imperiod him when he wasn’t looking. 

 

“You’re not bad looking, Hermione. If you just controlled your hair a bit, you’d be stunning, I’m sure.” 

 

Her mouth drops open and her face goes pale. A blush highlights the freckles along her nose and he swallows the lump developing in his throat. The carpet pattern becomes suddenly fascinating as she bursts into laughter, nearly doubled over and wheezing. 

 

“I fail to see the humor in a compliment. Do women in the future not receive them?”

 

“Oh, you would fail to see this!” she chortles and meets his gaze. He seizes the moment to slide into her mind, growing frustrated at the seemingly unconnected images. A boy--no two boys--one with messy black hair, one a ginger. The chamber, Hogwarts, a man without a nose. Hermione wearing a form fitting pink dress that causes a deeper ache in Tom’s stomach that leaves him unsettled. A forest, a tent, Hermione in the arms of that black haired boy and Tom bites back the snarl as she rips away her gaze. 

 

“That was rude,” she shouts and they fight again and magic takes her away. 

 

He could loathe magic at times. 

 

So he tries to respect her boundaries. He attempts to extract information in other ways. They argue over the smallest details of magical theory. He sets up a potion lab and they begin brewing together. She appears relaxed. Bits slip out about the war--of the hunger, the mud, the dreary rain plaguing them. The mist that obscures her vision. The boys she feels so strongly about but about whom she will fall resolutely silent.  He wonders if she is their lover. 

 

She devours any text he brings her. They debate lengthily--he enjoys following her trains of logic, only to point out when they derail. He savors her shiver, her slip of hesitation, before she explains the flaw in his logic. He laughs at the way her hair explodes in the humidity of the lab. He rips a mint leaf off the plant and offers her one before placing one on his tongue.  She smells like lilac and summer and breezes over a rumbling sea.   

 

She ends up sleeping over one night, much to their consternation, as the magic does not take her when dawn approaches. He leaves her to return to his dorm. The Room builds her a luxurious bathroom. He stumbles, dropping the muffin he filched for her, when he sees her neck deep in bubbles and she is screeching at him and he finds himself sketching the dips in her collarbone during Potions. 

 

He tries to figure out how it all hangs together. 

 

Obviously, he decides one morning after he wakes up to see the other couch empty--Hermione whisked away by magic at some point during the night--obviously, she is meant to be his partner. That’s the only sensible explanation. Why else would magic bring her to him? Clearly there is no other women at his level, an indisputable fact from his time at Hogwarts. Magic must have brought her to him as she is closer to being his equal than any others. 

 

It made perfect sense to him that magic would bring the Heir of Slytherin such a clever woman, possibly the brightest witch of her age. She could challenge him. She could aide him. He worries his lip as he wonders how to convince her to stay. 

 

Magic must sanction, no must be causing the churning in his stomach and pains in his chest. To bring them together. He wondered if she was as fascinated with him as he was with her. If she felt compelled to watch him  sleep as he did with her. Nevermind the odd obsession with her collarbones and delicate wrists and slim neck. 

 

He finds romance tedious and uninteresting. 

 

But she is a challenge and he settles in to determine just what kind of snare will hold her. 

 

* * *

 

“Yes, but you understand that most wizard don’t use logic. They rely on magic far too much,” Hermione stresses. To her surprise, Tom nods in agreement. 

 

“They believe they are somehow outside of the world. That things don’t affect them.” 

 

He’s talking about the blitz, she realizes. She remembers Harry’s story. That Tom grew up in an orphanage in London. That he nearly wilted when Hogwarts almost closed over the chamber of secrets and Myrtle’s death. She sucks on her bottom lip and she doesn’t detect Tom’s sudden intake of breath.  Hogwarts must send him home every summer, she thinks. He must experience the blackouts. 

 

“Perhaps,” she hazards, gaze flicking over to his wand on the table beside him, “this is why we need the cultures to mix.”

 

“Why should we mix when we can take what we want from them?”

 

“I don’t know Tom because that’s imperialism and that’s wrong.” He wrinkles his nose at the word and she wonders if its been used in political theory yet, cursing herself for using a word so soon. 

 

“Says who?” he challenges. “Who decides what is right and wrong, Hermione? It fluctuates throughout the ages. Slavery used to be considered right.”

 

“You’re confusing morality with legality.”

 

“Again, who defines morality? You don’t seem to care that your clothing allows for little room in the imagination. Or has morality gone the way of the fainting couch? Or is it your proximity to Muggles?”

 

Hermione cannot stop the shocked gasp. She barely stops her hand, inches from his cheek. 

 

“I am a Muggle born,” she seethes. “It doesn’t make me less of a witch.” He glances over his nose at her, his superiority wrapped around him like a cloak and she swears to hex him next chance she gets. 

 

“Besides, again, you are confusing morality with social mores.” 

 

“Then what is morality, Hermione?” 

 

She studies him, wondering what he is hoping for with this line of argument. Does he hope to convince her that might is always right? She thinks of _The Once and Future King_ and struggles to remember its exact publication date. And if bringing it into the past with her would harm the timeline. 

 

He gestures to indicate that he is waiting and she shrugs, falling bonelessly onto the couch. She doesn’t stop the yawn and she refuses to cover her mouth. She’ll show him rude, she thinks smugly. Their conversations have enough dips and swoops, valleys and ranges, that she feels comfortable enough to close her eyes. After all, she has fallen asleep around the dark lord and he didn’t avada her into oblivion. She rotates her shoulder, not fully healed with their run in with Death Eaters when she and Harry went into town for groceries. 

 

Tom slides over to the couch. 

 

“Sit up,” he orders and she smirks at him. He shakes his head. “You’re so frustrating at times.”

 

“Welcome to my world” and she wants to bite her tongue. She shouldn’t be teasing the dark lord. And he shouldn’t be teasing her in response. This is not the man who flew after them in the dark. Who flung curses at Harry and Dumbledore in the ministry--dark and imposing and terribly accurate and deadly. 

 

She knows darkness is eating at him, that his soul is patched and bloody. She wonders if the friendship between them will make any difference. 

 

She sits up and he slips behind her. She is too, too aware of his hands on her back and his breath on her neck and her hand trembles. 

 

“I won’t hurt you,” he murmurs and she hiccups. She shivers as he pulls down her shirt and stares her shoulder, one calloused finger caressing the scar. It’s introspective, its clinical but its also in awe. 

 

“What happened here?”

 

“You know I’m at war.” 

 

“I don’t recognize this curse.”

 

She cackles. She knows Dolohov is among his followers. She wants to say: not yet you don’t. Instead she deflects with a bland response and he huffs. He knows she’s lying. It’s a tango they dance around each other and she knows he’s trying to cleave tightly to her. She doesn’t know why. 

 

“Then I guess I would want to know is how that you let someone get this close to you?” His voice is flint hard and she flinches. 

 

“I wasn’t that quick. He was...he’s too used to inflicting harm.” Her words are swallowed by the tumble of the logs in the fireplace, logs snapping ferociously. She feels warm breath by her ear.

 

“I can teach you to be comfortable inflicting harm. I can teach you to survive this war, Hermione. I can help you save your friends.” 

 

She turns, her lips close to his chin. She can see where he nicked his jaw in the morning. She can smell his sandalwood and leather cologne. He has a mint leaf on his tongue and the coolness of his breath skates across her cheek. 

 

“All you have to do is ask Hermione.” 

 

It’s a promise, it’s a threat, and the snare has been sprung. 

 

“Teach me.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom Riddle does nothing for free. 
> 
> She learns the bob in his throat when he swallows. He learns the valleys of her body, the flare of her hips. 
> 
>  
> 
> "That's my girl."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case someone needs it or thinks this story needs it, I'll toss it here: potential dubcon 
> 
> _There will be time to murder and create, ___  
>  _And time for all the works and days of hands_  
>  _That lift and drop a question on your plate;_  
>  _Time for you and time for me,_  
>  _And time yet for a hundred indecisions,_  
>  _And for a hundred visions and revisions,_  
>  The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot

Tom Riddle does nothing for free. Everything has a cost. His offer to teach Hermione comes with a price tag and she debates for days, waiting for magic to steal her away again. Harry watches her pacing, his green eyes dark with fear. He knows exactly who she is battling. 

 

He’s been there before. 

 

“I don’t think this is a good idea.”

 

“So you’ve said Harry,” Hermione hurls back impatiently. This debate has grown stale, all arguments retread. Harry huffs and rises from his seat to grab her by the shoulders. 

 

“I need you to be safe.” He knows every dip and swoop of her back, every knob in her spine, and his breath--all Colgate and fresh and modern--temporarily banishes the fear that has taken up residence in her heart. She knows Harry. She understands his reticence. His sense of responsibility, his need to care for her and everyone else in his circle. He folds her in his arms and she rests her cheek on his shoulder. He is comfortable and familiar. 

 

“Trust me,” she tells him. 

 

He nods. “Always.” 

 

Magic steals her away. 

 

Tom is sitting by the fire, leafing through a book. His hair hangs in his eyes, his robes are off, his jacket discarded. The room is hot and staid and smoke seems to sting her eyes. He looks up and she sees hope on his face before he carefully schools it away. 

 

Assuming the hope itself wasn’t a facade, she thinks. 

 

She thinks of her mother and father. She thinks of the knife sliding into her heart as she whispered oblivate. She thinks of Ron’s anguish, Ginny’s torment, Neville’s near constant anxiety. Of Harry’s longing for parents. Of Harry living under the stairs and deprived of food, of comfort, of his parents’ love. Of her own education, denied. Her own life erased. 

 

But he has hope in his eyes, his teeth peeking through a half smile. She swallows the fury rising, like so much bile. 

 

The problem with witches and wizards is that they don’t use logic. 

 

“Alright,” she says. “I agree to your terms.” 

 

* * *

 

Soon he maps the flares of her hips, the knobs in her wrists, the line of her jaw. He becomes accustomed to her soft curls next to his cheek.  His hand nearly swallows her as he guides her through the movements to skewer an opponent, her breath hitching as she speaks the words. He rubs his cheek against hers and stubble abrades bone fine china. He isn’t sure if he wants it to hurt but he inhales her wince anyways. 

 

She remains shrouded in mystery, despite their bargain. She feeds him slivers of information, always sidestepping his minefield. He takes an uncommon sort of pride in this; its further proof that she is an excellent acquisition. Her knowledge will guide him. He can avoid missteps. His success is guaranteed.  

 

 She tells him that his era is the same as her grandparents’--the only hint to how far she has come. A statement that sends him reeling in pleasure and disgust and intrigue. He hopes she doesn’t find him ancient like a grandfather and he doesn’t want to dwell on that sopping sentiment for too long. It’s a poor idea to become attached to things. 

 

He takes delight in the confirmation of the true fate that awaits him. His blood thrums in bed at night, the lilac of her shampoo on his skin, and he dreams.

 

They discover that while days may pass with him, only a few minutes pass in her time. Tom muses the meaning of time and what exactly magic hopes to accomplish. She falls into the room, mud covered jeans, torn lips, ashy hair. 

 

“Where’ve you been?” he coos, brushing back a lock of hair as he commands the Room to build a bathroom for her. 

 

“Running. Fighting.” Her answer is short and he thumbs the corner of her mouth. 

 

“And you won?”

 

He meets her hungry grin with one of his own. 

 

“That’s my girl.”

 

* * *

 

Ventus and difiendo become favorites of hers. She no longer fears the Death Eaters when they stumble upon her. Her arsenal grows. The line between Harry’s eyebrows digs deeper. Power whispers along her flesh and she wraps it tightly around her like a cloak. 

 

“Are you certain we’re doing the right thing?” he whispers, thumb stroking the dirt off her cheek. She nods and licks her lips. She can’t tell him how comfortable the words feel on her tongue, how powerful she feels as the Death Eaters reel from her curses. The little gallop of her heart as she watches fear steal over their faces. 

 

She understands all too rapidly how easily Riddle would have been seduced by power. 

 

She gives Harry another secret instead: “Harry, you’re a horcrux.”  

 

Tears and shouts later, a full explanation--but Harry trusts her. Ron does as well--to a point. He doesn’t truly understand how books can lead one down a path of strength and power. Tom does. Hermione banishes that treasonous thought from her mind as she prepares to uncouple the horcrux from Harry. 

 

She is trudging back to the tent after an unsuccessful scouring for knowledge to help Harry when magic begins its inexorably crawl toward her. She braces for impact: a tidal wave of currents, hot and muggy, curls unfurling, as she is swept into the past. She staggers but does not fall. An uncomfortable reminder as to how familiar these visitations have become. 

 

She expects to see Tom reading or studying or torturing someone. Instead...he is dancing. His robes are off, his sleeves are rolled up, his tie cast aside. The Room of Requirement has conjured up a facsimile of a girl with dark curly hair and vacant eyes. 

 

“That your idea of a perfect date, Riddle?” she taunts and he executes a neat little pirouette until he is facing her. 

 

“Yule Ball, Hermione. I have a reputation to uphold as Head Boy.”

 

Hermione frowns. “They told us it only happens during the triwizard tourn--” She seals her mouth shut with horror and he grins, all shadows and ghouls in the firelit room. 

 

“Really? That’s fascinating,” he murmurs, letting go of the shade. “You must tell me more.” She puts her lips together and barely has a moment to cast a protego before his nonverbal lifts her into the air and slams her into the wall. A quick cushioning saves her from smashing her head on thick stone walls. 

 

“You are failing to keep up the end of your bargain.” 

 

She grimaces and he lets her slide to the floor. She can feel his power wrapped around her throat, a sinuous glide tight around her torso and her thighs. His power has weight--it lies heavily on her skin--sultry and hungry. 

 

Hermione sketches out the triwizard tournament as thinly as she can. He is fascinated. He will want more. Her stomach clenches as he approaches her and she thinks its fear. His hair has lost its rigid pomade and it curls floppily in his eyes. 

 

“You can show me the steps.” He expects his orders to be followed. She licks her lips and takes a step back. Learning to duel from the dark lord is one thing. Allowing him to hold her in his arms and sweep her along the floor, the same movements as Viktor, was beyond the pale. He was cold and calculating and cutting during lessons. She isn’t sure she can let him wrap his arms around her in a facade of intimacy. 

 

She doesn’t want to know how Tom Riddle’s hands will feel on her back or the taste of his breath mingling with hers (she can imagine though; this has become almost too familiar to her. It beckons to her as much as the power he promises). He narrows his eyes and she rises to shaky feet. She hesitates only a moment before wishing for the record she wants. A moment later, a taut clarinet fills the room followed by a throaty voice lamenting the dangers of falling in love.  

 

Hermione looks at him, at his outstretched arms. 

 

“Come now,” he taunts. “I’ve been closer to you during spell casting.” She hesitates and he swallows a scowl. “You aren’t afraid are you?”

 

“Of course I am,” she whispers. “I’m not stupid.”  He looks pleased at her admission and quickly crosses the room, wrapping an arm around her. She slips her hand into his and allows him to swing her, his steps flawless. 

 

“You hardly seem like you need practice,” she murmurs into his arm. 

 

“I refuse to falter,” he retorts before stopping, his adam’s apple bobbing. He’s revealed too much and she finds that she can understand him again. She nibbles on her bottom lip, all too aware that Tom is tracking her tongue, and he’s too close and she feels the rumble of power, her own magic sparking. 

 

She is gone before he can lean down.  

 

“Hermione, what’s wrong?” Ron asks, staring at her arms up, her eyes tearing. 

 

“Nothing. Nothing at all.” She exchanges a worried look with Harry before banishing the feel of Tom’s hand on her back from her mind. She cannot hide the sandalwood smell clinging to her nor does she want to admit that she falls asleep with her nose pressed to her shirt. 

 

* * *

 

“No! Harder! Faster!”

 

“Stop yelling at me!”

 

“You’re distracted!” The curse zings past her, stone billowing as it strikes the wall. Hermione growls and Tom feels an odd sense of pride. She’s grown so strong. She casts nearly as quickly as him. Her power reverberates in the air, their magic grappling together, a rippling mirage quality to the air. 

 

“I am tired,” she grits out and he snorts. 

 

“It’s war, Hermione. I imagine you’ll always be tired. And hungry.” 

 

She flings the hex at him so quickly that he barely avoids it. He snarls. That was a particularly nasty spell. 

 

“That’s right,” he encourages. He levels his wand at her and he still can’t stop the shiver down his spine at the widening of her eyes. After all this time, she betrays her fear of him in the smallest ways. He savors it. He wants to lick it off her lips, along her throat, bottle it for enjoyment in later hours. 

 

“You need to learn the so called Unforgivables,” he lectures and she glowers. He tsks her, wagging a finger in her face. Her lips curl and he discovers that he likes how defiance looks on her. It is an unusual stance but he embraces it. If he can be lenient with her, perhaps he can model leniency with others. It is a useful tool in his arsenal, he reasons. 

 

“I don’t want to kill anyone,” she mutters and he shrugs. 

 

“But they want to kill you. They want to leave your little mudblood splattered over the walls. They want to dance on your naked body. Perhaps they want more with your body--” He is unable to finish before his skin is slashed and blood pours out. 

 

He gazes at her, pride in every line. He thinks she is like fiendfyre and his confidence falters at his wonder if he can truly contain her. 

 

Magic is bringing her to him. She is his alone. His to control. 

 

Before his eyes close, before she can finishing healing him, he smiles, all teeth: “That’s my girl.”

 

* * *

 

Hermione still remembers her first flight on a broom. Fear screaming in her veins, a sense of buoyancy coupled with cautious joy, her heart tripping into a bone rib cage, hands trembling until veins threatened to pop. 

 

Kissing Tom is her first flight on a broom. It is an oil spill that can never be contained, a struck match on the precipice of falling, the moment suspended between breathing and drowning. 

 

“That’s my girl,” he croons, pressed into her back. Her body is a warm, taunt little thing. “A wonderful marriage of unfathomable and practical. A delight.” 

 

Lestrange groans and rolls over, clutching his thighs. Her crucio is incredibly powerful. It renders him immobile, his screams clinging to her skin. Tom runs his hands down her arms and she tells herself not to shirk. 

 

“Again,” he whispers. And crucio leaves her mouth and she doesn’t want to end the satisfaction of watching a Lestrange on the ground, writhing and foaming. The cursed words burn her forearm and she thrusts the pain to her own spell. 

 

After Lestrange limps out (he finagles a pain potion from Tom; Hermione cannot give it; she hopes to curse him through his DNA to Bellatrix, that bitch), after Tom cleans up, his fingers bruise her arms, his lips caress the scar. He is furious and vengeful and utterly mesmerized by the mudblood carved into her arm. He stops the worst of the pain caused by the cursed knife Bellatrix used. It barely throbs now. 

 

His teeth scrape over it and she shivers. 

 

This one is not from fear. 

 

“This feeling toward Lestrange,” he tells the vein in her wrist, lips brushing flesh, “this is what you use for the killing curse.” 

 

His lips learn her topography, his hands discover valleys and hidden routes. He likes to hold her neck. She likes the way he tastes of mint and tobacco and sandalwood--he has callouses on his fingertips and she craves their scrape along her spine. 

 

“No, Tom. This is what I use for the killing curse.” Her lips are clumsy, his teeth are sharp, and copper fills her mouth. 

 

He is every rule she’s ever broken, every structure she wants to smash--an entire system she loathes in one teenage boy. He succumbs to her first--his desire to devour is apparent and needy and he drags her to his chest--a small victory in an ocean of defeats. 

 

She doesn’t want this. She tolerates it. 

 

She still longs for the smell of his aftershave.

 

* * *

 

Magic is whipping her frenetically now between ages. An hour here or there. He barely has time to mine her for information before she is snatched away again. 

 

He grows desperate for her. 

 

He’s too used to her mind, her lips, the precious information stored in her brain. He vows to snatch her, to plumb her mind, to make her submit to him now. To mark her as his. 

 

Tom Riddle owns people as easily as things. 

 

She was his price. 

 

She vowed to be his when she took this bargain and magic is denying him his right to her.  Magic should bend to his will. He is the Heir of Slytherin. Magic belongs to him. He lurches and raves and she slips through his fingers. Her kiss burns the corner of his mouth. He rages. 

 

He cannot take comfort in the simpering looks of Lucretia Black or the palavering nonsense of Lestrange or the easygoing advice of Alphard Black. All he wants is her, her, her. To duel her, to teach her, to wrap her in storage, to place her on the shelf with all of his other conquests. 

 

He is slashing a battle dummy when she glimmers. She is tired and frayed. He rushes to her, shoving a sandwich in her hand. The hunger around her eyes is as familiar to him as his own. He wants to see her fed, his legilimens is on his lips, her mind barred steel when she dares to meet his eyes. 

 

“If you want immortality, Tom, you should look into something other than horcruxes.” 

 

His gapes, fish belly mouth, and magic snatches her before he can rip his claws out. He’s left with lilacs on the air. 

 

He never sees her again. 

* * *

 

Magic is whipping her frenetically now between ages. An hour here or there.

 

She prays it doesn’t whisk her away when she uses runes and arithmancy to tear Tom Riddle’s soul from Harry’s body and contain it in a shoe. A shoe she had stolen from Riddle, the one thing she took from the past. She needs his essence for this spell to work.

 

The horcrux is destroyed by Gryffindor’s sword and she swears the black smoke caresses her jaw, where his lips last rested, before screeching into the void.  

 

“All we need now are the cup and the diadem,” she informs Harry and he gestures toward Griphook. 

 

“I have a plan.”

 

She curls into her sleeping bag, her shirt pressed to her nose, seeking any trace. She runs a finger down her jaw. She studies the carving in her arm. 

 

She wishes for magic to keep her here, to finish it all. 

 

She wishes for magic to make clear its intentions. 

 

She wonders if she’s changed the future much with her whispering history into Tom’s ear as he curled around her, his breath ghosting along her cheek, a peek of the mint leaf between his teeth. 

 

She hates that she misses him. 

* * *

 

It’s the Battle of Hogwarts and that sniveling Harry Potter challenges him. They race along the towers, curses bright, and he laughs as he tosses an incarcerous. Harry is wrapped in ribbons and falls to the ground. 

 

“The famous Harry Potter,” he snarls, anger a pulsing red behind his eyelids. To be defeated by a boy! It is a humiliation not to be borne. He raises his wand, the avada on his lips--

 

“Tom!” 

 

His heart is an unused thing now, dusty and forgotten. It hiccups, a cough swallowed by the ash of his own desire to break it. 

 

He knows that voice. 

 

He can barely find the will to turn, to see, to confirm, that it is her, the vision that has haunted him for five decades. 

 

She is clad as he last saw her.  His mouth gapes like a fish. 

 

“Hermione,” and he savors her shudder. He must be the monster she always knew him to be now and he finds that his desire to put her among his trophies has not abated along those dry and sallow years. 

 

Her wand is pointed at him and he sees the flicker in her eyes. 

 

He knows this. 

 

He cannot stop the smile.

 

“Do you think you can do it?” 

 

Her eyes harden and her remembers how he thought she was nothing more than fiendfyre all those years ago. When he held her in his arms and she smelled of lilac and triumph and lightning strikes along a turbulent sea. 

 

“I look forward to seeing what you do, Hermione.” 

 

“I told you not to go down this path. I told you not to make horcruxes.” There is a tightness in her voice that he cannot identify. Desperation? Her affection was only hours ago. He was sure his was dead all these hollow years. It can never be resurrected. 

 

Magic, it seems, still held mysteries for him. 

 

He bares his teeth and levels his wand at Harry. She understands. 

 

She raises her wand. 

 

“That’s my girl.” 

 

“Avada Kedavra.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my first fic in present tense and sans beta so I'm sure there are errors. I apologize. 
> 
> The song Hermione plays is Benny Goodman and Helen Forrest's 'Smoke gets in your eyes." It came out in 39 but Helen Forrest won vocalist of the year in 43 so it shouldn't be so unusual for Tom to hear it.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work in present tense and my first HP fic. Eeeeppp.  
> I do think that Tom Riddle is a meditation on might vs right and I think Hermione would see that, hence her jump to The Once and Future King which was published in 1958. That would be a fun line to tease, given it's about Arthur and the Arthurian legends entanglement in the HP world. But, alas, not here.


End file.
